Are Young People Ready For The Workplace?

Are Young People Ready For The Workplace?

Young people are struggling with the currents of life, isn’t it about time we taught them how to swim?

Young people aren’t ready for the workplace.

Instead of treating young people like parrots and teaching them to regurgitate information that Google can now provide for us instantly, we need to teach them how to become productive members of society. Many of us left the education system with basic knowledge in some areas of academics but also with the inability to create workplace relationships with colleagues.

Accountability, honesty, ownership and trust are key attributes that must be instilled in young people during schooling to better prepare them for the real world.

Today more so than ever we’re seeing more job dissatisfaction and this is partly due to the fact that young people are not adequately prepared for what the workplace demands of them. The skills young people are learning in schools are not what businesses need and this is why many students finish school and settle for jobs they aren’t interested in. This can be seen in the job market where there are many job vacancies but also high rates of unemployment, this is because the skills and qualifications businesses need are not matched with what young people learn in schools.

If we continue with the current system of miseducation we are only contributing to our own demise.

The time for entertaining ignorance has passed, with economic downturn on the horizon we must take action now to prevent future financial catastrophes. This begins with educating our young people in the right way. If the bankers who caused the financial crisis in 2008 were educated effectively perhaps the disaster could have been avoided. The power to prevent the next one lays in our young people’s hands, we must educate them on how to use this power.

Written & edited by Rabab Z & Sachin S.